Not everyone lives with their boyfriend or girlfriend or in a field where a group of gentle horses shows up every night and lets you pet them until morning. If you are someone who lives alone, make yourself feel less alone with these tips:

• Break up the uncomfortable silence by leaving the TV on all day or, if you love Earth, just constantly yelling.
• It’s hard to fall asleep alone, so build a “sleeping buddy” out of materials that are both comfortable enough to hug and durable enough to withstand your razor-sharp teeth.
• Invite friends over for dinner. If you’re funny, dressed nicely, and figure out how to avoid having that smell happen, they’ll probably ask you to marry them. Right?

• Rent a baby from one of those rent-a-baby businesses. Not only is it cheap, but that baby won’t be able to walk out on you until it’s much, much older.
• Whenever the loneliness feels unbearable, just remember you’re not alone—there are hundreds of prisoners living just like you.

It’s like I am slowly realizing the dream I was living in has ended. “Time to wake-up!” Now I have a lot of growing to do if I want to become a person I love. Instead of the last few years of just surviving, I need to focus on thriving.

It’s scary. I feel confronted by difficulties. It is very scary. I am always worried about messing up, getting in over my head, or how the consequences will hurt my heart. And it seems like everything, even good growth, hurts my heart.

Maybe I should think of it like stretching muscles before starting a work-out. It might not feel great, but it is getting me ready to do something much more demanding. And it’s a necessary step.

Adding fuel to the fire, the shirt’s designer, Mark McNairy, tweeted “MANIFEST DESTINY. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST” last Friday in response to customer complaints. He quickly deleted his tweet, but not before a screengrab of it was widely circulated, and then he followed up—three days later—with an all-caps semi-apology.

“Unfortunately, the meaning of my ‘Manifest Destiny’ T shirt has been misconstrued and the sentiment behind it grossly misunderstood,” McNairy posted on Twitter on Tuesday, blatantly disregarding his “survival of the fittest” quip. “I first learned of Manifest Destiny in American History in Junior High School. To me it has always meant that one could set goals, work hard, and achieve their dreams. Having the opportunity to design for the Gap was the realization of one of my dreams. This phrase and they way I used it was in no way meant to be offensive or hurtful, and I apologize to those who might have interpreted it in that manner.”

“We’ve seen many uglyshoes in our day, but a new pair dubbed “Scary Beautiful” is definitely the most treacherousfootwear we’ve ever seen. The massiveheels appear backwards on the foot, so the wearers feet point straight down the back, as if in ballet shoes, with their shin leaning against the front “heel” end of the design to balance. The shoes are a collaboration between artist Leanie van der Vyver and Dutch shoe designer René van den Berg, and serve as a commentary on today’s impossible standards of beauty.”

“After working in fashion for seven years, and therefore being well aware of the manipulation images in fashion suffer for a perfect result, I still compare myself to them and other current beauty ideals,” Van der Vyver told Yahoo! Shine exclusively. “My frustration with my own inability to overcome these feelings of inadequacy was what brought ‘Scary Beautiful’ into fruition. The shoes formed part of my graduation project that was a result of my thesis. The conclusion of my thesis investigation was that people are not satisfied with what they look like, and that perfection, according to the beauty and fashion standards, has reached a climax. Humans are playing God by physically and metaphorically perfecting themselves. Beauty is currently at an all time climax, allowing this project to explore what lies beyond perfection. Scary Beautiful challenges current beauty ideals by inflicting an unexpected new beauty standard.”

Her file is heavy, thick and pregnant with the details of over a decade of brokenness, pain, confusion and hopelessness.
I have been watching her for four days while she wanders though the hallways and the courtyard like a ghost without a plan. She breathes and moves and sees and knows to pause for the food cart and to step aside for a busy nurse, yet there is no one home. She is alive yet not alive. Not living, just existing. In the hope I might be able to understand what would cause a woman so young to be so burdened, I pull her file and begin to read. I open up the transcript of her most recent admission interview. It makes no sense, her words are strung against words which were never meant to be partnered, it is nonsense and it is tragic. A woman admitted so mentally ill…